God of the Mess, too
We have a tendency to sanitize our beloved faith stories, whether it be a polished cross at Easter or our sterile Nativity.
It’s that time of year, and in years past, we attended a really nice live nativity in our little prairie town. Last year, as we climbed into the car to return home, my beloved turned to me and said, "I was struck by how neat and clean our retelling of the Nativity story is. It is all so Christmas Card perfect. That wasn't the case 2000 years ago."
We have a tendency to sanitize our beloved faith stories, whether it be a polished cross at Easter or our sterile Nativity.
But …
What must it have been like 2000-plus years ago? A young, un-wed woman who finds herself mysteriously with child. Angels were appearing with crazy stories. A guy who knows his wife-to-be was pregnant by someone else and still choosing to marry her.
Imagine getting ready to give birth, and there is no place for this to happen, and you are a long way from home. Imagine the stress of a young father, wanting to care and provide for his wife and soon-to-be-born child. Imagine what it must have been like in desperation to have to give birth in the feed trough, and let’s not get started on the messiness of actually giving birth. All this topped off with the malodorous of everyday animal business (certainly not pine bows and cinnamon!).
This scene would make for the worst-selling Hallmark greeting card of all time. And yet, in that time and place, Jesus was born to poor, insignificant parents in the ignoble conditions of a stable. God enters the world, in a human way, through Jesus into mess.
I guess this is why the popularized picture entitled Jose' y Maria continues to strike me as so profound. A modernized depiction that takes the shine off the story and plunks it down in our everyday commonness. To the onlooker, Joseph and pregnant Mary would have appeared no different to our modern eyes than the couple in the cartoon. Perhaps we have walked by folks who looked like this going into the local 7-11? The commonness should offend our religious piety. It should pull the pin on the super-spiritual image of the parents of Jesus and re-orients the God-who-is-love smack in the middle of life as it really is.
All this to say, the Holy God has no problem with wading into the mess that human life can often be, and I think we need to be careful about over-spiritualizing Mary and Joseph (and all the stories of people in scripture). We cannot sanitize them to the extent that they cease to be real people with real fears, hopes, questions, struggles, and doubts.
To sanitize these people and their stories may make for tired old holiness/purity preaching, TV specials, and children's stories, but it is no real comfort for a very real person trying to walk out this thing called life. You see, I need the God of the mess; I need God when things are messy, complicated, and scary, not the sterile, “ewww, don’t get my hands dirty” kind of God.
God is not mess-averse.
The Good News is that no matter what happens, God is with us, and Jesus is the guarantee and the demonstration of this reality. I have come to believe that faith isn't so much believing that God will do this or do that. Faith, for me, is in the growing experience that God is indeed good. He loves me thoroughly and securely because of the way I am held in Christ. With the assurance that no matter what I am going through, I am never alone or abandoned.